The Rega is a good brand, it is actually recommended by Linn to people who can not afford the Linn product.
Most of the comments in this thread are interesting and somewhat correct. To build on them, I will go in another area of a table. The basic undelying principle of a turntable is that it is designed to pick up vibrations. Vibrations that can and will be reproduced as energy. Some of these vibrations may come from sources other than the record. A quality turntable setup (arm and cartridge included) will have greater attention paid to controlling the vibration created by areas outside of the record. A tonearm can twist, and that puts the needle at a different position, and the twist can cause vibrations and friction. No tonearm is error free at any point in the equation. The better models will be more stable and less likely to introduce variables.
There are some quality models produced today at decent prices - another name that has re-emerged is Sota.
